When The Biggest Tech Companies are Constantly Fighting a Losing Battle

When The Biggest Tech Companies are Constantly Fighting a Losing Battle

Being a tech giant is not easy these days. Companies are constantly fighting to obtain and maintain their supremacy in their respective markets, while competitors are always there to make good use of their every mistake and grab major portions of it. Sometimes, even the biggest tech companies with the best-known brands are fighting an uphill battle, and sometimes they lose to smaller businesses that are more agile, creative, and innovative in their own area of expertise. And sometimes, these tech giants fight among each other, too, invading each other’s territory. Which is, most of the time, a losing battle.

Microsoft

There is a reason why the games of Microgaming available on your iPhone and Android devices will barely run on a Windows 10-powered smartphone. The app was made with the leading smartphone platforms in mind, and Microsoft’s market share on the global market is minuscule compared to its big competitors. And you can’t blame Microsoft for not trying: its latest smartphone OS brought desktop and mobile devices under the same terms and even managed to transform a smartphone into a desktop computer before its competitors even thought of such a feat.

The reasons for Microsoft failing to become a major player in the smartphone market are multiple. After years of struggles, the Redmond giant finally gave up, shifting its focus away from mobile hardware and software development.

Apple

What devices do pupils and professors use at school?

Apple would’ve loved to see them use iOS-powered devices to assimilate all the information they need in life. Breaking into the education world is a big deal for platform providers, and not only because once out of school, the now grown-up students will probably choose devices with a familiar platform.

The Cupertino giant has, in turn, seen its dreams of being the biggest provider of edtech in the US shatter under the blows of its biggest competitors, Google and Microsoft. Google’s Chromebooks have proven to be the solution of choice for the majority of classrooms (ChromeOS had a 58% market share at the end of 2016), followed by Microsoft’s Windows with 22%. The market share of iOS-powered devices in the classroom has declined from 26% in 2014 to just 14% in 2016, and the share of Mac OS X also fell from 8% in 2014 to 5% in 2016.

Google

Google – or rather its parent company Alphabet – is perhaps the biggest and best-known name in the internet market. Its products are everywhere, from smartphones to desktop PCs and ads everywhere. But its attempts to break Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop/laptop operating systems market have failed and will likely repeatedly fail in the future, despite its net supremacy on the smartphone market.

Microsoft operating systems of various versions have an almost 91% market share globally, followed by Mac OS X with around 6% and Linux with a little less than 3.5%. Despite selling a significant number of Chromebooks, Google’s market share on the desktop/laptop operating systems market doesn’t even make the charts. While Google’s Android is almost as widely used as Microsoft’s Windows, the desktop market is still out of reach for the Mountain View giant.